


Fight for me baby

by Shiba_K



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Smut, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 04:19:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5115530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiba_K/pseuds/Shiba_K
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara receives a nightly visit from two policemen escorting a bruised and handcuffed Doctor. Tired and worried about her friend, she does her best to take care of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fight for me baby

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time posting my fan fiction on the Internet. I'm also very new to writing smut. Nor am I a native English speaker so there probably will be some grammar/spelling mistakes here and there. Apologies for any misuse of British and/or American idioms. It's sometimes difficult to remember which is which.
> 
> The story is set after Last Christmas but before The Magician's Apprentice. It therefore diverges slightly from the canon. There is some violence, but I hope it's not too graphic. 
> 
> I have personal experience with using bags of frozen peas as make-shift ice-packs. They work quite well.
> 
> The lyrics were taken from a song by Crystal Shawanda of the same title.

The loud knocks on her apartment door startled Clara out of her sleep. A pair of bleary eyes opened with difficulty and glanced at the bedside clock. The device revealed that only about twenty minutes had passed since she had dozed off, the bright red digits glaring at her mockingly from their position on the small nightstand. 

2:17 AM

Clara emitted a loud groan, eyes closing again. Another round of knocking made her jump. She had fallen asleep again. A second groan escaped her, though this time she made the effort of rolling onto her side and slip her feet over the edge of her bed. Slowly she sat up, the duvet falling from her sleepy form. 

Tiredly Clara rubbed her eyes stifling a yawn. More knocking came from the hall. 

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ grumbled Clara, leveling a glare in the direction of the offending sound. Her alarm told her three minutes had passed since the knocking had first started.

2:20 AM

Who could it be this late at night? The first person that came to mind was the Doctor, but he wouldn’t bother with knocking, he would just park his TARDIS inside her bedroom and wake her up with a rude comment about how she drooled on her pillow. 

No, not the Doctor then.

Confused and slightly annoyed at the disturbance, she snatched the robe slung messily over the chair near her three-mirror vanity and shrugged it on, covering her old tank top and sweatpants. No point in giving whoever was at her door a show. She knew she must look a sight with hair sticking all over the place from sleep and bags underneath her eyes. She could spare the other person at least the horror of her tattered pajamas.

Clara shuffled drunkenly toward her front door, bumping into the wall once or twice, her muscles uncoordinated from sleep and exhaustion. 

The Year 8 exams had to be marked for tomorrow and she had been traveling non-stop for two weeks with the Doctor before she had remembered she needed to correct them. The Doctor had reluctantly agreed to a break, just enough time for her to finish her work before whisking her away again on some other adventure. Her whole day and most of the night had been spent reading Year 8’s interpretation of English poetry. 

Clara shuddered at the memories.

Three quick turns of her key and her front door swung open slowly. She expected to see maybe her neighbor who always managed to forget her house keys. Clara swore that one of these days that woman would forget her head. Or maybe it was the batty old lady from three doors down still looking for her cat even though the poor thing had died months ago.

She did not expect to see the two uniformed police officers standing with a bloody and bruised Time Lord between them. A handcuffed, bloody and bruised Time Lord. Clara’s mind went blank as her brain refused to process the sight in front of her. 

She was dreaming. That was the only explanation. Exhaustion induced dreams. Yes.

‘Miss Oswald?’ The taller of the two policemen asked, snapping Clara out of her daze.

‘Yeah,’ Clara answered dumbly, her eyes shifting from the sulky Time Lord to the man. 

‘Do you know this man?’

A simple question really. And under any other circumstance Clara would have answered straight away. But tonight she was tired, she still had markings left to do, god help her, and for once she really just wanted to mess with the Doctor for landing himself yet again in situations like these. 

‘No,’ she said slowly, stretching the vowel and shaking her head, impressed by her ability to keep a straight face. 

An indignant splutter came from the Doctor, followed by her name. 

‘Clara!’ The Doctor strained against his bonds, the second police officer tightening his hold on the Doctor’s arm.

Clara sighed. 

‘Yes, yes, I do know this man, I’m sorry. It must be the hour,’ Clara joked. 

The joke fell flat, none of the people present laughed, and Clara pinched the bridge of her nose tightly. She could feel a headache looming.

The two policemen looked at each other and then at both the Doctor, who was glaring at Clara, and at Clara herself, coming to the conclusion that the sooner they handled this the quicker they would be rid of these two weird people. 

‘Ma’am, your friend here was involved in a pub fight. So far no charges have been pressed, but we needed an address in case the police needs to interview him again regarding the incident. He stated that he was staying at your place. Is that correct?’ The police officer appeared rather skeptic about the whole story, but Clara couldn’t blame him. The Doctor could be a bit difficult to handle sometimes although he was getting much better at dealing with strangers under her gentle, and sometimes not so gentle, guidance.

Clara really looked at the Doctor for the first time since the police had knocked on her door, taking in his disheveled appearance. His clothes were dirty and torn in places with no sign of his signature coat, and the collar of his white shirt was stained with rust colored spots. There was a cut on his bottom lip. A bruise was forming on his left cheek bone, the vivid shades of blue and green clashing with his usual pallor, while left eye was slightly swollen. There was another cut just above his right eyebrow which had bled heavily, some of the dried blood encrusted just underneath it, perhaps the source of the stains on his shirt. Messy silver hair completed the look. 

During the time she scrutinized him, the Doctor refused to meet her eyes, holding himself with as much defiance and dignity as one could when beaten and handcuffed. But he was quiet, too quiet. No complaints, no snarky comments regarding pudding brains, nothing. And that made her worry. 

‘He is. I mean, yes, that’s correct, he is staying with me.’ 

Clara kept gazing at the Doctor while she answered the officer, the Doctor’s eyes meeting hers for a fleeting moment, gratitude shining in them for her slight lie. Technically Clara stayed with him in the TARDIS except when they were on Earth. Then he would stay with her, sort of but not really. His TARDIS stayed at Clara’s and he stayed in his TARDIS. Therefore he stayed with Clara. 

‘Has he been known to be violent before this?’ 

The next question surprised Clara and she refocused her attention on the two policemen. 

‘What? No!’ She said defensively, a spark of anger igniting inside her at the accusation. Up until that moment she had stood just inside her apartment one hand holding the door. Now Clara took a step forward into the hall letting go of the door in favor of crossing her arms over her chest, ready to come to the Doctor’s rescue. 

The police officers exchanged another look. 

‘I’m sorry, ma’am, standard questioning I’m afraid,’ the other policeman apologized to Clara. 

‘Right, we are releasing your friend into your custody,’ the taller man said while his partner reached for the keys to unlock the Doctor’s handcuffs. 

‘Do you have a phone number we could reach you in case we need to talk to your friend again?’

Clara nodded, and gave her cell number to the officer. Out of the corner of her eyes she kept watch of the Doctor as he rubbed his wrists where the handcuffs had dug into his skin. She couldn’t help but notice the angry red abrasions on his knuckles. 

So the fighting had been reciprocal.

The knowledge only added to her growing concern. 

‘Now that my hands have fallen off thanks to you cutting off my circulation, are you quite satisfied with yourself?’ The Doctor growled.

‘Doctor!’ Clara admonished him. That’s the Doctor she knew. ‘Behave,’ she added gently. 

The Doctor huffed and glared at the two police officers before stalking off into Clara’s apartment. 

The other three people remaining in the hall all looked at his retreating form, two with sympathy in their eyes and the third with worry. 

‘We’ll leave you to it ma’am, good night and sorry for the disturbance.’ 

They all shook hands politely, Clara bidding them a pleasant night too as the policemen turned to go. Just as they were leaving, the shorter one, the one who had been holding the Doctor swung around.

‘You might want to keep a closer eye on your boyfriend next time, ma’am. He seems quite the troublesome one,’ he imparted her with his advice before turning to follow his colleague down the hall. 

It took a moment for the words to sink in. When they did Clara’s eyes widened in shock. 

‘He is not my…’ she trailed off, the two men had already disappeared into the staircase. There was no point in replying, they would never hear it.

Closing her eyes and counting to ten, Clara wished that this was all a dream. When she would open them she would find herself in bed still. She opened them. She was still standing in the gray hallway of her apartment building, one of the fluorescent light flickering overhead with an annoying click. 

Clara groaned.

She knew that she wouldn’t be getting anymore sleep for the night. With wistful thoughts of her cozy bed, Clara walked back into her apartment locking the door behind her, intent on finding out what her Time Lord had been up to that would land him in custody of the police. 

Not finding him in the living room, Clara moved to the still dark kitchen where she eventually saw the Doctor seated at her table, leaning back in his chair with something covering his swollen eye, like an ice-pack.

Clara frowned. She was quite sure she didn’t own one.

Coming closer, she could make out more details in the weak light streaming in through the blinds of her kitchen window. 

Was that a bag of frozen peas?

‘There wasn’t much choice in your freezer,’ came the tired voice of the Doctor.

Her eyes snapped from the bag of peas to his, his good one open and regarding her with a long gaze. Clara shuffled closer to him. 

‘I wasn’t aware I had to cater to banged up Time Lords, otherwise I would have made sure to keep a steak or two in there. Besides,’ she added, removing the hand holding the bag and gently lifting it to observe the damage. ‘The peas seem to be doing a fine job.’

Clara was now close enough that the Doctor could feel the heat radiating from her body, which was still shaking off the last vestiges of sleep. It was… comforting. That’s why he had come here, instead of going back to the TARDIS. That, and the Doctor didn’t think the police officers would have believed him had he told them he lived in a blue police box. 

Still, he had wanted the security and comfort offered by Clara’s presence. Sought it out even. Although his relief was tempered a bit by a niggling thought at the back of his mind, most annoying really. He felt… guilty, yes guilty, at disturbing Clara, more so after she had asked for a break. 

Clara was tired, but then, so was he. And selfish too.

‘No, no, no, no. No steaks, too hard, don’t mold well and start to smell after a while. Then you’d have a stinky mess _and_ a bruise on your hands. Please, Clara, do keep up,’ the Doctor said exasperated. 

His companion snorted and replaced the make-shift ice-pack back onto the bruised eye. 

‘Since when have you become an expert on make-shift ice-packs, Doctor,’ wondered Clara, moving away from him. 

‘Clara, Clara, Clara, Clara, I’m over 2000 years old, I have had lots of bruises and therefore plenty of opportunities to test out the best methods. Why, I even wrote a book about it once, got a bit bored you see.’ The Doctor smiled at her, craning his neck to follow her movements. 

He already missed her heat.

She turned on the light above the sink to better illuminate the room, but not too brightly. Then she started gathering the supplies she would need to patch up the Doctor. A quick trip to the bathroom to get the last essentials and she set everything down on the table. 

Disinfectant, band-aids, gauze, anti-biotic cream, towels, and a bowl of lukewarm water. That should be enough. 

The Doctor eyed all the stuff now sitting on her table wearily with one eye as Clara poured some of the disinfectant into the bowl of water.

‘Uhh, Clara, are you trying to mummify me? Because you know we don’t have a very good track record with mummies…’ he hesitated. Maybe Clara was more angry than he had anticipated. You never knew with human females, especially the ones with round faces and faulty emotions.

Clara just shook her head, used to the Doctor’s antics. 

‘I’m trying to take care of my injured alien friend who got arrested and deposited at my door at an ungodly hour of the night.’ She dipped the end of one towel in the water then stepped close to him. 

The towel had barely made contact with the broken skin of his eyebrow that the Doctor’s free hand shot out to grip her wrist. Her words had struck a chord inside him.

Clara looked at his hand wrapped around her wrist and felt goose bumps rise as the Doctor’s calloused skin touched the sensitive skin of her wrist where the sleeve of her nightgown had ridden up leaving it exposed. She felt the electricity spark at his touch. She had been feeling it much more often lately. 

Her eyes traveled back to his face locking with his. 

The Doctor was watching her with a kind of desperate intensity of which Clara had sometimes caught a glimpse. 

‘My Clara, my carer,’ he said gravelly while brushing his thumb on the inside of her wrist. 

She shuddered at the combination of his words and touch. In that moment she realized that the Doctor didn’t only need someone to treat his injuries. He did have a fully functional med bay in his TARDIS. No, he needed his friend to comfort him. 

Her left hand rose to cradle his cheek just under the bag of peas, her thumb stroking him gently, his stubble scratching a bit at her palm. 

‘Hey,’ she said softly, ‘are you going to tell me what happened? How you got these injuries?’ 

The Doctor gazed at her silently for several moments before coming to a decision. The chair scraped lightly on the floor as he pushed back a bit with his feet, the hand still holding her wrist tugged her forwards, and Clara, not expecting his actions lost her balance, her hand coming to rest on his chest to catch herself. 

Not yet satisfied with their new positions, the Doctor let the bag of peas fall to the floor with a muffled sound, using his newly freed hand to wrap securely around her waist and pull Clara down to sit astride on his lap. He needed to feel Clara close to him, her presence soothing his troubled mind.

Clara’s eyebrows shot up as she took stock of their new arrangement, though she made no move to get up. 

‘If you wanted a hug, you could have just asked, you silly man,’ she scolded him softly.

‘I…’ the Doctor swallowed self-consciously, looking away briefly, ‘it’s… still a bit… difficult,’ he finally ground out. ‘Actions are easier.’ He shrugged, his eyes flicking back up to hers, silently pleading for her to understand. 

She did, of course she did. 

Since Christmas, since the Doctor and Clara got their second chance, they had traveled and run together, giddy with excitement for each new adventure. Giddy with the other’s presence. Clara had noticed the change in the Doctor. He had embraced a free and devil-may-care attitude to life, switching from magician to space hobo to what should be a horrible red velvet coat but actually made him look very handsome, off-setting his silver curls. 

Then there was the new tactile dimension to their relationship. Basically they touched all the time now. Hand-holding and hugs, lots of hugs, initiated by him and her, cuddles on the TARDIS couch after an adventure, and an occasional kiss on the cheek or forehead to show their mutual affection. A few times it had occurred that cheeks had been exchanged for the corner of lips, not quite a full kiss, but certainly hinting at more. Clara couldn’t have been more surprised when the Doctor had taken the initiative. 

So now Clara wasn’t terribly shocked when he pulled her into his lap seeking her touch. Something he had seen had affected him, and she was determined to find out, though she knew she would have to let the Doctor come to her. 

A year ago she could never have imagined that the acerbic old man would have sought her out like this, and she couldn’t be more thankful that they had managed to get a second chance. 

Who to thank indeed.

Clara gently ran her free hand through his curls, having recently discovered that it was a sure fire way of getting the Doctor to relax. Sure enough, she immediately felt some of the tension ease out from him, his shoulders dropping slightly. 

Letting out a sigh, the Doctor calmed down aided by Clara’s ministrations. Closing his eyes, he deeply inhaled Clara’s scent allowing it to envelop him as he focused on her presence. Both is hands were now on her waist and they leisurely trailed up and down her sides and back. The touch of her lips to his forehead brought him back from the half-asleep state he had slipped in. 

The Doctor opened his eyes to find Clara gazing at him with a mixture of concern and love. Yes, love, no point in lying anymore. He had acknowledged that he and Clara had been moving steadily in that direction since the dream crabs, probably even earlier than that if he was honest with himself. 

‘Hey,’ her voice broke the stillness of the night. 

‘Hey.’

‘Let’s take care of those cuts, shall we. Then I’ll make you a cup of tea, how does that sound?’ Her hand hadn’t stopped caressing his wild hair. By now Clara had forgotten all about her tiredness, the Doctor needed her. 

‘Exactly what the Doctor ordered.’ 

The Doctor smiled smugly at his own joke. Clara laughed despite herself, pleasing the Doctor even more. 

She shifted slightly in his lap, twisting around to reach for the water bowl and dipping her towel in it. Carefully she brought the towel to his brow, rubbing lightly at the cut and cleaning away the encrusted blood. She worked in silence, conscious of the Doctor’s penetrating gaze on her as well as his hands on her body holding her anchored to him. 

The Doctor let her work in silence, not moving even with the sting of the disinfectant. He took the opportunity to watch her openly, taking in details that he had memorized long ago, from her wide eyes now ringed with dark shadows, and funny nose, to her full lips, a flash of white teeth peeking out from where she was biting her bottom lip. 

A sudden surge of heat shot through him, and the Doctor inhaled reflexively. Desire, yes, that was what he was feeling at the moment. A desire to kiss Clara. He was slowly learning to categorize all the new emotions and sensations he was experiencing in this body, growing accustomed to them, desire for Clara being one of the more common ones lately.

Clara had glanced at him when she had felt him breathe sharply, checking for signs of discomfort. Always checking, making sure he was alright, his Clara, his carer. He reassured her with a small squeeze. 

She worked diligently, making sure to apply some cream to the cut above his eyebrow before moving on, cleaning the dried blood at his neck, cupping his jaw with her left hand to tilt his head for better access, her thumb absentmindedly stroking his stubble. When she reached the stained collar of his shirt, she put the now dirty towel beside the bowl before setting to open the first few buttons of his shirt. 

As she did so, Clara leaned more closely against his side and the Doctor couldn’t mask his pained hiss at the contact. 

She froze.

‘Doctor?’ she asked hesitatingly. 

‘Sorry, it’s still a bit sore,’ he said through gritted teeth, controlling his breathing as the pain ebbed away gradually.

‘What is sore? Your side?’ 

The Doctor nodded silently.

‘Doctor… What. Happened?’ 

Time to get some answers.

He remained quiet, contemplating the best way to answer her question without having to divulge everything. He felt a bit ashamed at the state he was in, coming back to her apartment to lick his wounds because he hadn’t been fast enough in the first place to avoid getting injured. There was a part of the Doctor which felt as if he had let her down, his injuries testament to his lack of fighting skills and inability to keep Clara safe in a similar situation in the future. Not that he would admit that to her.

His pride had taken a blow. 

‘aahh… uhm a boot happened,’ he murmured quietly not looking at her. 

Clara’s eyes widened in disbelief. Quickly she moved off of him and with two hands on his shoulders she pushed him backwards towards the sink. 

‘Show. Me.’ Her clipped tones masked the worry that gripped her heart. 

‘Now, Clara, my Clara, calm down, there is no reason to worry.’ Damn, he saw straight through her. ‘You know I heal faster than humans. And the pudding brain that did this didn’t do a very good job…’

‘Doctor…’ 

She was using her teacher tone and alarm bells started going off in his head. 

‘Do as you are told.’

Grumbling an inaudible _control freak_ under his breath the Doctor relented. He unbuttoned his shirt, wavering for a moment as more skin was revealed, suddenly shy about his appearance. Clara had never seen him shirtless before. He mentally cringed at his display of vanity, calling himself a pudding brain for caring about what Clara might think of his older body: his stomach not completely flat especially when sitting down, and chest muscles stretching perhaps less tightly than he would have liked. 

His fingers hovered above the small buttons a moment too long and Clara noticed, immediately understanding his dilemma. 

‘Don’t care about that, I care about you,’ she stated, her voice brooking no arguments. Her brown eyes held his, willing him to grasp the meaning behind her words. 

_I see you, only you._

The Doctor let out an embarrassed laugh. 

‘Sorry, stupid,’ he said now continuing with the task of opening the buttons. Clara watched him work the buttons loose, his eyes focused on his actions. Her gaze eventually shifted from his hands to admire the wiry expanse of skin his shirt revealed. 

For an old and gray stick insect the Doctor was quite easy on the eyes, skin taught over sinewy muscles with just a sprinkling of gray hairs on his upper chest. A sudden image of running her hand through it, her fingers splayed possessively over his hearts, came to mind.

She blinked, the image now gone but the lingering want made her fingers twitch. Clara willed herself to move on, the Doctor had come to her seeking her care, not find her fawning over him. With his shirt now parted, her eyes caught the source of his earlier pain. 

The angry blue and purple bruise marring the skin just underneath his ribs made her gasp, her hand shooting out in reflex to touch him, stopping short of doing so out of fear of further hurting him. 

‘Oh, Doctor,’ her whisper was laced with a quiet sense of sadness. She felt her own side throb dully for a moment, his pain momentarily becoming hers too. At no other time had Clara wished she could take away his pain more than now. 

Shifting her gaze, Clara discovered that the Doctor had been keenly watching her all this time. He must have seen her reaction then at seeing his injury, and before that at seeing him partially naked. The possible ramifications of that would have to be dealt with later. 

Now lifting both her hands, she cupped his face stroking his cheeks. 

‘Were you ever going to tell me about it?’ she asked softly, searching his eyes for an answer she dreaded to find. The way the Doctor averted his gaze guiltily spoke volumes. 

‘Why?’ 

The resignation in Clara’s tone made the Doctor feel even worse. He had hurt her with his silence, even worse than if he had lied, he knew that. 

‘I didn’t want to add to your worries,’ he responded, his eyes coming back to meet hers. ‘You asked for a break and yet here I am, with my tail between my legs running back to you at the first sign I might need help. I only manage to add to your burdens,’ he sighed in defeat. 

Clara’s heart lurched in her chest. Just how much did this man care for her? Stupid alien, he should know better than that. She would have to set the record straight once and for all. 

‘Sometimes you really are Doctor idiot,’ Clara laughed softly. She stepped closer to him, pausing for a second unsure whether she should resume her previous position in his lap or not. She quickly decided that this moment required a hands on approach.

Carefully, ever so mindful of the extent of his injuries, Clara sat sideways on his tights making sure she leaned against is uninjured side. 

‘I asked for a break from the running, not from you. Never from you, Doctor,’ she said determinately. ‘And I’m actually flattered you came back running to me at the first sign of trouble because that tells me you trust me to take care of you in whatever form you need. I will always be here to do that, always. Are we clear?’

They locked gazes for a long time, both wordlessly conveying feelings that were as of yet too difficult, too precious to put into words, but also needing the reassurance brought on by the knowledge of the other’s emotions.

‘You come back running to me anytime you want, ok?’ Clara chocked out with sudden tears prickling at the back of her eyes, her hands seeking out the Doctor’s and interlocking their fingers.

‘Always to you, my Clara,’ he answered with a rough thick with emotion. 

The smile Clara gave him upon hearing his words was like a panacea, dulling the aches he felt and making his hearts swell with joy. Soft and radiant, like a spring blossom, Clara Oswald smiled at the Doctor, happiness cursing through her. 

She brought one of their intertwined hands to her lips, kissing the Doctor’s abused knuckles. Her hot breath ghosted over his broken skin as her lips lingered, prolonging the contact and sending a shiver through him. 

Clara gazed at him, feeling his body react to her simple touch and a sense of accomplishment filling her at having roused such a reaction from him. 

The Doctor held her gaze while twisting their hands so he could bring her wrist to his mouth. 

‘Clara.’ 

Her name spilled forth from his lips mere seconds before he kissed the inside of her wrist. 

Her own body trembled slightly at the sensation of his lips and scruff on the sensitive skin of her wrist. She sucked in a reflexive breath as her heart stopped only to restart at a gallop. Clara was sure an electrical current had just traveled from her wrist up to her arm and belly where it gathered in a growing pool of molten heat. 

The Doctor keenly observed Clara’s reaction, the way her skin puckered and her pulse jumped underneath his lips. Her core temperature rose just a tad too, breathing a bit more shallow than before. There were days he cursed his superior senses and others, like today, where he thanked any higher deities that existed for them. 

‘Clara, Clara, Clara, Clara, Clara.’ 

She shifted, raising her head and brushing her nose against his, pushing against him so he moved back but never breaking contact. Clara brought her forehead to rest against his. 

‘Tell me. What happened, Doctor. Please.’ 

Clara nuzzled his nose again, silently urging him on. 

‘I can’t be what you need if you don’t tell me what’s wrong with you, Doctor. Let me be your carer.’

The Doctor often asked himself what he could have possibly done in his too long a life to deserve a woman like Clara Oswald. With no quick answer, he had resolved to try to show her what she meant to him, though at times he struggled with expressing the multitude of emotions spiraling through him. 

Clara had even made cards for him to help with some of it, although it was mostly for when he dealt with other pudding brains that were not Clara. And he couldn’t very well ask her cards for when he didn’t know how to tell her that despite her roundish face and out-of-control eyes, he thought that she was beautiful. Or that her happy smile never failed to lift that dark and oppressing blanket that sometimes settled around his hearts. Or that she was the center of his universe.

So he had resorted to touching, gradually increasing the frequency, and staring. The Doctor did that a lot, staring at Clara Oswald wide-eyed and with a barely there smile. 

Like now.

He didn’t care she could see him do it.

For a minute, Clara watched the Doctor stare at her with a mesmerized look in his blue eyes.

‘What do you see when you look at me like that?’ she questioned and smiled gently, stroking his jaw.

‘Wonders.’ 

_I see the reason why I try to be a good man._

Blinking, Clara moved back a little. She was taken aback by the quickness of his response, almost as if he had been waiting for her question for quite a while and had formulated his answer in advance. 

Wonders. He saw wonders in her. 

Clara found it hard to describe the emotions that surged through her at the idea. Joy, excitement, love, but also humbleness. For a man who traveled through time and space seeing the most impossible things, only to stop and look at her and say that she was the one person in the universe he saw true wonders in, that was truly humbling.

And so was the childlike sincerity in the Doctor’s voice. She was sure she had just fallen a little bit more in love with him in that instant. 

‘I know you don’t like hearing it, but I think you are pretty wonderful too. Even when you end up in my flat at ungodly hours in the morning escorted by two policemen and looking like hell.’ Clara added the last part to alleviate the heavy atmosphere that had descended around them. 

The Doctor smiled at that, his first true smile of the night which Clara answered with one of her own. He didn’t smile only because of her joke. No, he smiled because he knew. He knew that Clara gazed at him in much the same way, like he was something incredibly precious. The Doctor had seen it in her eyes, and eventually had stopped questioning it. Second chance were not to waste.

‘C’mon, Doctor. Tell me what happened,’ gently coaxed Clara. 

He huffed in mock annoyance, sliding his arms once more around her waist to readjust her position more comfortably against him. It had nothing to do with the way his hands accidentally slid underneath her parted nightgown to the place where her tank-top had ridden up. Nothing to do with touching the warm, bare skin of Clara’s back. Well, that was what the Doctor told himself at least. 

‘Alright, alright, always so impatient. You are the one always complaining I never shut up,’ he bit out. 

Clara merely rolled her eyes at the Doctor’s show of grouchiness, by now more than used to his antics. She settled in to listen to his story, trying not to pay too close attention to the spot burning on her back where the Doctor’s hand rested. 

 *******************************************************************

The Doctor was wondering the streets of London, walking aimlessly. He had been kicked out of Clara’s flat. To be more precise, Clara had asked for a break. Two days of no traveling, claiming she had to catch up on her markings. 

_‘I’m sorry, Doctor, but I promised Year 8 to have their marks by the start of next week. We’ve been traveling non-stop lately and I have had absolutely no time to check their exams.’_

He had not whined. Not too much anyways. He had sighed, told her he understood, that her work educating the little pudding brains was important and had left her to it, promising to come back later to pick her up when she was finished.

_‘But Clara! There is so much to see! We could go explore the translucent caves of Laminas IV or perhaps we could go meet the sacred queen of Callisto, rumored to be the…’_

‘Doctor,’ Clara gently admonished him. ‘Two days.’

‘Clara!’ 

‘The sooner you let me get started with my markings, the sooner I’ll be finished. Then we can go spelunking, I promise.’ 

Clara had proceeded to plant a quick kiss on his cheek to seal her promise to him, effectively halting any complaints from his part. 

He had acquiesced, grumbling under his breath and causing the most wondrous of sound to escape his Clara. She giggled at his sour behavior and started pushing him backward through the hallway in the direction of her bedroom. 

‘Two days,’ she had repeated to him. ‘Maybe less if you’re lucky.’ And then she had winked at him. Properly winked at him. Not the damn-it-I’ve-got-something-stuck-in-my-eye wink, no, a real, proper flirtatious wink. 

The Doctor had felt his core temperature rise by several degrees. 

His back had hit the TARDIS’ doors with a dull thud but he refused to move further before he had completed their new ritual for whenever Clara and he would (willingly) part for a certain amount of time longer than one or two hours.

Wrapping his long arms around her body, the Doctor bowed forward and buried his face in her neck, inhaling Clara’s scent and hugging her tightly to him. After the first times that the Doctor had caught Clara by surprise by his sudden love for hugs (she had even wondered if he had been dying, or she had been dying), she now readily reciprocated his embraces. 

Clara’s parting words had been a warning for him not to get into trouble without her. The Doctor had therefore decided to land the TARDIS in a out of the way park in London and simply wander around the city. Maybe he would check out that guitar store he had spotted last time near Clara’s house. It had nothing to do with wanting to remain close to her apartment. 

Unfortunately, that had only entertained him for about an hour, though he had found a very nice guitar to buy. (Carrying around that credit card Kate had given him had turned out to be useful after all.) Thinking of possible songs to play to Clara had been easy too. Tomorrow he would practice in order to surprise her, but for now he felt restless, the idea of not seeing Clara for two days straight upsetting him. 

He missed her, terribly. 

More walking would do him good, burn some of the nervous energy flowing through him. 

By now the sun had gone down and he had had an interesting conversation with a cat regarding windscreen wipers. It had also made him think whether Clara would perhaps like to get a cat. Prove to Clara he could do domestic. Wasn’t getting a cat a sort of try-out before having children? Or was it with a puppy? Would Clara want to have children? Would Clara want to have children with him?

_Whoa, ok, ok. STOP, Doctor!_

Now he was getting ahead of himself. No children, no puppies. Maybe he could just ask her about the cat. In the future.

How he had ended up in a rundown neighborhood he wasn’t quite sure. Well actually, his sonic had picked up some weird readings and he had tried following them to their source, not paying any attention to where he was going. 

The Doctor had a feeling the Clara might not like this, but she wasn’t there, and if he didn’t tell her she would be none the wiser. What Clara didn’t know, couldn’t hurt her, or him. 

_The Stray_

The name of the seedy looking pub the sonic had led him to did little to reassure him. His hand hesitated on the worn handle of the door, his screwdriver pulsating in the other. He felt the vibrations of the too loud music through the wood under his palm and for a moment questioned his idea of going in. 

But the prospect of the unknown behind that door proved too much of a temptation for the curious and bored Time Lord. 

He was greeted by a wall of blue cigarette smoke upon opening the door making him curl his lip in disgust. It was difficult to see through the haze and the Doctor had trouble distinguishing the silhouettes of the other patrons, especially the mass of writhing bodies on the dance floor that moved to the resonating beat of the music. Or tried to. 

Nothing out of the seemingly ordinary jumped out to him. Giving the sonic screwdriver a firm shake, he scanned the room, knowing that the readings were coming from somewhere in there. 

The tip flickered a few times.

_There!_

Shoving his way through the crowd, the Doctor made his way in the direction pointed out by the sonic. What he found was a jukebox which had clearly seen better days, currently belching out the awful racket that the people there were mistaking for music. 

He scanned it once, twice, three times just to be sure. The readings were the same each time and the Doctor stared at the device accusingly.  
The strange readings he had picked up were nothing more than the poor old machine doing its job: play music. Unbeknownst to the people surrounding him, it had also been emitting a low frequency wave that he had mistaken for an alien radio signal. 

He huffed half in annoyance, half in disappointment. Another bust. 

The Doctor's attention toward the jukebox hadn't gone unnoticed by some, and a burly and very drunk man approached him. 

'Hey, old codger!' 

The Doctor ignored the man, pointing his sonic screwdriver at the music machine in a last desperate attempt to scan for anything he could have missed the first three times around. 

'Bloody hell, gramps, ya gun’ deaf too?! I told ya, ol' betsy han't been workin' like she used ta since Johnsey spilt his beer all o’er her las’ week,' the man slurred.

Finally the Doctor threw a glare over his shoulder at the drunkard behind him, taking in the inebriated state of the man and coming to a quick conclusion that he presented no threat. 

‘Might huv’ been the age too, ya know. Pro’bly frum the same year ya were born in.’ The man broke into a fit of drunken giggles at his own joke. The Doctor merely grumbled under his breath something about humans not even having the technology to build a jukebox the year he was born. 

Making another effort to ignore the plastered man now giggling hysterically, the Doctor straightened and pocketed his screwdriver, only to freeze in his tracks when a crash came from his side. Alarmed, he looked down to find the man passed out on the floor. 

_He’ll have a nasty headache come morning_ , thought the Doctor.

He rolled his eyes in contempt and started making his way to the door of the pub. The jukebox had proved to be nothing remotely interesting leaving him with little reason to stay. 

The Doctor had barely gone a few meters when a flicker in the corner of his eye caught his attention. Turning, he scanned the room for whatever had made him stop. 

In a very dark corner not too far from the jukebox and close to the end of the bar, a young woman, Clara’s age he noted, was being pestered by a walking closet. That was the only apt description the Doctor could come up with for the bear of a man disturbing the woman. 

Frowning at the sight, he crept closer, his acute hearing picking up only disjointed bits of what appeared to be an argument. Not that he needed to hear exactly what they were arguing about to know that the woman was clearly frightened. Instinctively the Doctor tensed, muscles coiled and prepared to act at a moment’s notice.

When the woman flinched as the man stroked her face with a finger, the Doctor felt bile rise in his throat, anger making his jaw clench and brows furrow into an ominous scowl. 

_Blasted pudding brain!_

Lengthening his stride, the Doctor shouldered his way through the suddenly thickening crowd, intent on interfering before anything bad could happen. 

He cursed as he momentarily lost sight of the pair until finally the mass of people parted. The scene unfolding in front of his eyes now had escalated. The burly man held the woman’s trembling face in a vice grip, fingers digging in her cheeks. Trapped as she was against the wall and with no one paying any notice to their fight, the Doctor saw a flash of pure terror in the woman’s wide, brown eyes. 

For a moment, the unknown woman’s slim face transformed into a slightly rounder one with a funny nose and a jolt of panic went through him as he imagined in his mind’s eye Clara taking the place of the woman. 

All but growling, the Doctor seized the man’s wrist holding the shaking woman. 

‘Let. Her. Go.’

The low tones of the Doctor’s voice made the man shift his gaze from the woman to the newcomer, glancing first at the wiry hand clamped down on his wrist and then to the man himself. He smirked. 

‘You her boyfriend then? Bit old, don’t ya think?’ the man sneered, dismissing the Doctor and shifting back to the terrified woman. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t rough her up too much.’ 

The Doctor tightened his hold on the man’s wrist. ‘Since I’m clearly dealing with an idiot here, I’ll repeat myself just this once: let. Her. Go.’

Shoving the woman against the wall and letting go of her, the man shook off the Doctor’s grip with a flick of his wrist. The practiced movement didn’t go unnoticed by the Doctor. 

‘You are treading on slippery ground, old man.’ All of his attention was now focused on the Doctor who for his part did not flinch as the large man stepped closer. He was now able to see the wild look in the man’s light blue eyes, alerting the Doctor to the fact that the man was under the influence of something. 

He knew he had gotten himself into trouble, without Clara. 

‘And you are making the mistake of underestimating me,’ the Doctor bit out, lip curled in open contempt. 

Without notice the man lunged forward to grab the Doctor who easily blocked him and pushed the attacker against his chest with enough force to send him tumbling to the floor. Quickly sidestepping the prone body, the Doctor walked over to the woman who had been staring wide eyed at the spectacle in front of her. 

‘Are you alright?’ The Doctor asked her, his focus now entirely on her. He never saw the fist coming. 

Crashing to the sticky wooden floor, the Doctor felt pain erupt in his left cheek and eye where he had been hit. He wasn’t given any time to take stock of his injuries as his peripheral vision caught the tip of a boot sailing straight at him. With no time to spare, he managed to tense his muscles just as the heavy shoe made contact with his flank, temporarily robbing him of the ability to draw breath. 

His attacker didn’t stop there, hauling him up by his jacket another fist poised to strike the Doctor in the stomach thinking he had been winded and unable to react. The surprise that registered on his face when the Doctor caught the incoming blow lasted a mere second before the Doctor’s fist struck him across the nose. 

Never had the sickening sound of bone breaking satisfied the Doctor as much as it did now. 

The man careered back into a group of men standing a bit further away from the bar, hitting the faulty jukebox. The hit was forceful enough to make the jukebox skip to the next track, the chords of a rock song coming on. The men didn’t take very kindly to being so rudely interrupted and quickly joined in the fight. 

Afterwards it was impossible to tell who was fighting whom as the pub became the sight of a tangled mess of human legs and arms wildly kicking and punching accompanied by the chorus of a song stuck on repeat. 

_Fight for me baby_  
I’m into digging deep  
Show me what you’ve got  
Show me I’m what you need  
Don’t wave a white flag  
Don’t be a coward now  
Nothing short of going crazy  
And fight for me baby

When the police arrived at the scene, it took three officers to separate the Doctor and the blue-eyed man. 

 *************************************************************************

‘And you know what the worst part is, Clara? I still have that song stuck in my head! Endless repeat! Do you think it’s possible to punch a song into someone?’ The Doctor asked her, getting increasingly more agitated.

‘Clara! What if I acquired some kind of brain damage because of that pudding brain? Listening to that awful song for the rest of my days, or until I regenerate! Oh god, I will go mad! Clara… OW!’

Clara let out an exasperated sigh and watched with tight lips as the Doctor rubbed his arm were she had pinched him. 

‘Doctor, I hate to break it to you, but you already are a madman in a snogbox,’ she told him. She remained perched in the Doctor’s lap, not having moved for the duration of his tale. 

‘The song is not the worst part of this. I’m considering adding a “Starting fights in pubs is not a good solution for conflicts” to your cards.’

The Time Lord’s eyes went wide at the suggestion. 

‘Clara! You can’t be serious!’

She felt her own temper rising at the Doctor seeming carelessness regarding the events that had transpired only a few hours ago. 

_God, had it really been just a few hours ago?_

With a loud protest from the man she was sitting on, Clara jumped up. 

‘Yes, yes, I’m serious! Because apparently you can’t be, so someone else needs to. I’m not angry that you got arrested and showed up at my door in the middle of the night, in handcuffs! Or that you went off on your own in the first place. I’m angry because you are so willing to dismiss this!’ she exclaimed.

Clara grabbed his right hand where it had fallen to his side when she had stood up, and now held it up in the weak light of her kitchen sink which highlighted the contrast between his naturally pale skin and the abrasions on his knuckles. 

‘What happened before the brawl got to you. I know that. I know that because you are normally not a violent person, and yet you’ve ended up with quite a few scrapes and it looks like you’ve dealt your fair share too.’

The Doctor refused to meet her gaze, his hand curled into a fist dislodging Clara’s hold of it and he brought it back down to his side. He felt his stomach churn uncomfortably knowing Clara was hitting all the right nerves. 

He mumbled something. 

Clara frowned.

‘What?’

‘I said: I broke his nose and jaw in two places.’

Her eyes went wide. And so did the Doctor’s at seeing them.

‘Clara, your eyes are doing the thing again, get them under control.’

‘You… broke… Oh, Doctor.’ Just like that Clara’s anger evaporated. For him to cause such damage… Clara didn’t want to think too much at what he must have seen to trigger this reaction from. 

Sensing the path her thoughts were taking the Doctor rose from his chair and enveloped her in a full-body hug, arms wrapping around her back and chin resting on top of her head. Clara quickly folded her arms around him, burying her nose in the skin of his shoulder and inhaling a mixture of his scent and the smoke and alcohol from the pub. 

She briefly wondered if the Doctor remembered he was half naked. 

‘I’m sorry you had to see me in this state, Clara. But the fear in that woman’s eyes…’ he trailed off, searching for the right words. ‘You and I have both seen people scared, staring death in the face. Yet tonight, it was … _different_. That man had absolutely no qualms with hurting her. It made my skin crawl. I…’

Clara ran soothing hands up and down his back trying to console him. 

‘I know, Doctor, you don’t have to explain yourself to me,’ she tried to reassure him. 

‘No, you don’t understand, Clara.’ There was a note of frustration in his voice, but it was difficult to discern to whom it was directed to. Pulling back a fraction so he was able to look her in the eye, the Doctor stared at Clara for a moment. There was a storm of emotions visible in them, making his grey eyes seem even harsher. 

Clara held his gaze unflinchingly. She instinctively knew he needed the contact and was happy to follow his lead, giving him time to form his thoughts. 

‘I realized something. Our adventures are dangerous. I expose you to danger much too often. Ahhh, I know you would like to disagree with me on this, but please bear with me.’ Though reluctantly, Clara gave him a nod. ‘But it does have a certain… ah addictive feeling to it, doesn’t it, running and staring death in the face, together?’ 

Both broke into small conspiratory grins. 

For a second the heavy air around them dissipated, although she should have known it wouldn’t last.

Just as quickly as the Doctor’s grin had appeared, it left. 

‘While potentially lethal, so far our adventures have never exposed you to a danger because of you being a woman, Clara.’ 

The penny finally dropped inside her head.

The Doctor stepped back completely from her, his hand falling from her back to grip Clara’s and intertwine their fingers. 

‘I … Clara, I … you know I have a duty of _care_ towards you. Tonight… it drove home that such dangers do exist, and I want you to know that I will do my absolute best to keep you safe from evils like these.’ 

Clara’s eyes softened and she let out a breath as she felt her heart very nearly burst with love for the alien man in front of her.

‘Oh Doctor,’ she was at a loss for words so relied on actions to show him how grateful she was for his pledge. Rising on tiptoe, Clara gently tugged at their linked hands to get him to bend down so she could place a lingering kiss on his forehead. 

‘I know, Doctor,’ she said, pulling back. ‘I know you will do anything to protect me. But I also know that you feel guilty about what happened tonight because in your eyes, me needing to patch you up is a reflection of your poor skills at fighting and helping that woman in the bar, which subsequently means that you think you might fail at saving me in a future situation.’

Silence descended on the pair as the Doctor looked away from the woman still holding his hands. 

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ Clara squeezed his hands in reassurance, ducking her head to try and catch his eye.

The Doctor sighed in a mixture of defeat and amusement. ‘Clara, my Clara, you know me too well.’

Quite astute of his impossible girl to figure out what had really been bothering him since he had shown up at her door escorted by the police. But hadn’t that been what he had secretly wanted? For Clara to understand his worries without him having to put it into words? 

Hmm, yes, he had expected nothing else from her.

‘Yeah, I do. That’s why you keep me around, to tell you when you are being an idiot, albeit a wonderfully charming and caring idiot like now.’ 

Clara smiled at him happily. 

‘That’s why I love you so much.’ 

The Doctor’s eyebrows shot up in surprise at Clara’s words. 

Her happy smile was tempered somewhat by a frown at the Doctor’s reaction. 

‘Don’t tell me it surprised you to hear that,’ Clara said.

‘Ahh no, not necessarily. It’s just that you and I, we, we don’t really talk so directly about this thing between us,’ the Doctor reassured her, letting go of her hands to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

‘Hmhm,’ Clara murmured in agreement, turning her head slightly so she could nuzzle his hand. ‘But since we are having a rare moment of openness I thought I’d throw it in just so there would be no misunderstandings. About my feelings for you, that is.’

‘And you know that I…’ Catching her eyes, the Doctor let his meaning hung in the air. 

Clara nodded vigorously against the hand now cupping her cheek. 

‘Good.’

‘No misunderstandings then.’

‘No.’

‘That’s good.’

They stared at each other for a good five minutes grinning stupidly until the Doctor broke the peace. 

‘Can I get dressed now? It’s just that your apartment isn’t very warm.’

Clara laughed, moving backwards and breaking their stare. 

‘Yes, yes. I was actually starting to wonder if you had forgotten about it.’ She moved to help him, but the Doctor caught her hands mid-air. 

‘Oh believe me, Clara, I hadn’t. It was rather difficult to forget it with you pressed against my chest for the good part of an hour,’ the Doctor replied, giving her a smirk coupled with a smoldering stare.

Clara felt the heat creep up her neck at his words and she swallowed against the sudden dryness in her mouth.

She watched him as he followed the movements of her throat before he returned his eyes to hers, unmoving. 

The Doctor had yet to make an attempt at actually redressing himself and Clara decided to take charge. If he wasn’t going to get dressed, he might as well join her in bed to try and catch a few hours of sleep before she would have to get up and finish her marking. God, she really could do with the sleep and was reasonably sure the Doctor needed it just as badly, superior Time Lord physiology or not. 

‘Come on,’ she said, tugging at his hand. ‘You are coming with me.’ 

Arching an eyebrow at Clara’s bossy tone, the Doctor nevertheless obediently trailed behind her as she made her way out of the kitchen and into the hall, stopping only to turn off the light. 

He remained quiet even when they approached the open door of her bedroom and she led him over to the unmade bed. Not letting go of his hand, she reached for the bedside lamp and turned it on, casting the dark room in a warm yellow light.

‘If you are not getting dressed, you might as well get some sleep with me. You’ve had quite the night and I barely got any rest before you showed up.’ Clara pushed against his shoulder indicating for him to sit down. 

‘And if you are cold, you can cuddle up to me seeing as my body temperature is higher than yours.’ She winked at him and proceeded to strip him of his shirt entirely, pausing briefly to undo his cuffs. The Doctor said nothing as Clara slid the garment off his shoulders, only speaking up when she turned to drape it on the back the chair near her vanity. 

‘Hmm, how could I refuse such a tempting offer?’ He sat down on the bed where Clara had been sleeping, watching with avid eyes the way her hips swung a little as she walked. 

She gave him a bemused smile over her shoulder. ‘That was rather easy. I would have expected you to complain about how Time Lords don’t cuddle or how you don’t need sleep.’ 

‘Like I said, how could I refuse the offer of a pretty woman,’ the Doctor stated, his lips curling in a disarming smile. 

Clara made her way back to the bed stopping in front of the sitting figure of the Doctor. 

‘I see your sense of charm hasn’t been affected by the brawl.’ 

She brought her hands to the side of his face, fingers ghosting over the bruise on his left cheek, moving to tuck a few of those errant curls behind his ears. Her hands moved down through his hair to his neck and then shoulders, gradually so as to give him time to protest or stop her. He didn’t. She continued, hands gliding over his shoulders and upper chest watching as he shivered at the contact of her warm hands on his cooler skin. 

Here she stopped, hands over his rapidly beating hearts, and soon hers were joined by his, long fingers covering them. 

They both gazed at the other, conscious that they were crossing a new line. They were playing a dangerous game now, the atmosphere inside her bedroom was cracking with electricity that made the hair on the back of their necks stand on end. 

Clara had been aware of the way he had been staring at her throughout the night, his eyes raking over her form with a predatory glint, taking in every detail. Him pulling her to sit in his lap had been rather forward even with their newfound closeness. Same with the way he had walked around shirt hanging open for over an hour in her kitchen, and now here he sat bare-chested in her bedroom. She licked her lips as she felt heat spread in her belly at the notion. 

Well, such a willing Time Lord didn’t happen very often, and Clara decided she might as well see how far she could take this.

Resuming her earlier exploration, she trailed her hands over his torso, noticing with delight the way his breath hitched when she deliberately brushed over his nipples. Halting when she reached his belly button, hands splayed, she slowly traced the fine trail of hair disappearing into the waistband of his trousers. She was rewarded by a quiver in his abdomen, feeling the muscles contract at her touch. The heat in her belly had definitely turned to arousal then. 

Bent as she was over him, Clara’s back started protesting at the cramped position and she knelt on the floor to relieve some of the tension, the Doctor parting his knees for her. His eyes had darkened considerably since she had started her journey over his chest, watching her every move silently, but with keen interest. 

Breaking their increasingly passionate gaze, Clara looked down to the purple bruise at his side, tenderly laying a hand over it. 

‘Does it still hurt?’ she questioned him.

The Doctor opened his mouth but before he could reply, Clara cut him off. 

‘The truth.’

He closed his eyes for a brief moment knowing he couldn’t lie to her. 

‘Yes.’

Her next action took the Doctor a little by surprise as he watched Clara lift her hand and shuffle close enough to place a gentle kiss on the ugly bruise. Straitening up, she caught the Doctor’s eyes, her own slightly hooded.

‘Where else?’ 

Clara’s voice was like a dark honey, smooth yet hinting at a smoky flavor, inviting him to have another taste to see if he could catch its elusiveness. It was… tempting, seductive even. That was what Clara was doing he realized: seducing him. And he was her all too willing victim. 

Leaning back slightly, the Doctor regarded Clara with hungry eyes. She was playing a dangerous game, he should have warned her not to toy with him. Yet he was eager to see how far she was willing to take this. 

His left hand rose to point at his sternum right between his hearts.

_They hurt when we are apart._

Her lips ghosted over the gray hairs dotting his upper chest and his skin erupted in goose bumps as her hot breath washed over him.

 _No more_ , was her eyes’ reply.

He then pointed to his swollen left eye. Clara kissed that too. His cheek was next, then the cut above his eyebrow, followed by his knuckles. Reverently, she did her duty as carer, her kisses taking away his aches and pains. She met his gaze after each kiss, communicating silently.

Lastly, the Doctor indicated to his lip. 

Clara bit her own lip, her eyes flickering between the small cut and the Doctor’s. 

_It’s your game. How far do you intend to take this, Clara?_ His eyes seemed to say, challenging her. Was she ready to step over boundaries laid long ago? Were they? After the events of tonight, what the Doctor had confessed, what she had in turn said… yes, it was finally time. 

Coming to a decision and conscious of the Doctor’s penetrating gaze, Clara brazenly straddled his lap her nightgown parting and revealing her old tank top, his hands coming up to hold her hips automatically. Now at eye level with the Doctor, who had been watching with rapt attention, Clara allowed herself a moment to simply look at the man she called her best friend and soon perhaps something more.

Her hands traced his attack- eyebrows, thumbs smoothing down lines, down his long nose and over his cheekbones, fingers sliding into thick silver curls and nails scratching at a day-old beard, brown eyes following the path laid down by her questing fingers. He let her explore his face, content to hold her close to him and bask in her warmth as she conducted her examination. 

Clara stopped at his mouth, lips parted slightly as her thumbs stroked his lower lip. Unconsciously she licked her lips anticipation building inside her at the thought of finally being able to taste his thin lips. Her heart was beating wildly in her chest and she was half surprised the Doctor hadn’t mentioned it yet. Couldn’t he feel it, how much he affected her? Made her blood rush through her body? The ache she felt coming from a hunger she knew only he could satisfy?

Something in his electric blue eyes told her that he did know, the fire she saw in them perfectly mirroring her own. 

Barely conscious of her actions, Clara tilted her head slightly to the side, her lips parting as she slowly closed the gap between them. In the back of her mind she registered the Doctor’s grip on her hips becoming firmer, keeping her anchored to him. 

She didn’t know when she closed her eyes exactly, only that she was finally kissing the Doctor. 

Kissing.

The Doctor.

Oh god.

Clara’s mind went blank as she melted into the kiss. 

The Doctor’s lips were cool against hers lazily coping her movements, lips stroking hers. He was sluggish, not yet fully comprehending what was happening, his mind lagging behind. 

She must have short-circuited something in his head. Yes, that was it. He would need to talk to Clara about this later. You couldn’t just short-circuit a Time Lord’s brain, it’s dangerous, it’s…

Clara’s tongue licked his upper lip and his brain finally shut up for good and the Doctor let himself go and simply feel. Instincts now taking over, he quickly became a more active participant, his hold on her changing as he brought his right hand up to cradle Clara’s head, fingers tangling in her soft hair. He mimicked her request by licking her lower lip, to which she gladly responded. 

The nature of the kiss transformed immediately, muted gasps rising from both of them as they pressed more urgently against the other. The tentative brush of lips was replaced by hungry sweeps of tongues, each chasing and stroking. 

Soft moans and labored breaths were the only sounds in the quiet room, the Doctor scarcely giving Clara the time to draw in air before he attacked her lips again, drinking from her with the same desperation of a man who had just found an oasis after weeks spent in a desert. Angling his head first to one side, then the other he changed the depths of their kisses easily going from the tender brush of his mouth against Clara’s, to kissing her deeply, occasionally biting gently at her lip. 

Clara enthusiastically returned his kisses, doing her best to keep up with him. Meanwhile her hands caressed his naked chest and shoulders, one ending up cradling the nape of his neck, tugging at the dark grey curls she found there. The appreciative growl rising from the Doctor’s chest made something inside her clench as need shot through her.

Suddenly feeling his chest under her hands wasn’t enough anymore. She wanted, needed more of him, closer. As if sensing her need, the Doctor pulled her closer to him, crushing their bodies together and thrusting up with his hips. There was no way she could mistake his intentions as she felt him hard underneath her. Clara ground herself against him, gaining strangled groans from both of them as their nerve endings sparked wherever their bodies touched.

Muttering a alien word, the Doctor broke their heated kiss, leaving a trail of open mouthed kisses along Clara’s jaw and down her neck to her pulse point where he bit not so gently at the pulsating vein. The resulting moan spurred him on just as much as the musky scent coming from her flushed skin. With his mouth busy marking her neck and collar bone, his hands traveled under her robe and top, pushing the material up until he had bared her breasts.

Leaving her neck, he nuzzled the valley between her breasts, taking a moment to just breathe her in and gain a modicum of control over the spiraling lust that had overcome him since Clara had first kissed him. A difficult task with the woman in question continuing to grind slow and hard against his arousal, her hands in his hair directing his mouth to her breast. 

An incoherent sound escaped her when the Doctor sucked on her nipple, his left hand palming her other breast and his right scorching a path down her back and sliding past the waistband of her panties and pajama bottoms to cup a smooth cheek. 

‘Clara…’ he murmured against her flesh, but she cut off any further sounds, anticipating his question. 

‘Yes.’ 

A new sense of urgency overcame them both as clothing became entirely too restricting in the stifling heat of their bodies and the need to feel the other’s skin. A flurry of uncoordinated movements saw the pair try to remove the remaining layers hurriedly, though hampered by their constant need for contact. 

Once freed, the Doctor was quick to reverse their positions picking Clara up as if she weighed nothing and depositing her in the middle of the bed before covering her body with his, pushing her down into the mattress and resuming their fevered kissing. It was impossible to discern who emitted the groans of relief at full skin to skin contact as they writhed in a tangle of limbs. 

Clara’s head swam, dizzy with the Doctor’s relentless touch. He seemed overcome with a need to make her body sing for him and she was aware of the several lip-shaped bruises and bite marks as they pulsated with a pleasurable ache, his way of marking her.

He claimed her mouth in impossibly long kisses, barely giving her time to breathe as he swooped in for the next, he himself appearing unaffected by lack of air. The Doctor’s respiratory bypass was really starting to tick her off. It wasn’t fair that he could go on without needing to breathe. And that clever tongue of his was so irritatingly good, robbing her of more breath as it made its way down her chest to her stomach and, and… _Oh god_

Clara’s eyes widened before slamming shut at the overload of sensation as the Doctor buried his face between her legs and gave her an excellent demonstration on the merits of having a respiratory bypass. He lapped at her greedily, his nose bumping against her clit and eliciting tiny moans from the woman lying under him. 

Feeling herself reaching the edge of the cliff all too quickly, Clara tugged at the Doctor’s hair forcing him to climb up but not without first giving her one last long lick that left her body trembling and throbbing with need. She caught sight of him, hair wild and eyes nearly black with a feral glint in them. She almost forgot why she had made him stop. 

‘Together,’ Clara forced out with a voice she very nearly didn’t recognize as her own, ‘please.’

The Doctor warred with himself for a second, her taste lingering in his mouth eroding his self-control and making him want to go back to Clara’s moist heat, but the wanton look in those brown orbs held him back. There would be more time later he knew, so he acquiesced to her request. 

Crawling upwards, he leaned on his forearms and rested his forehead against hers. Clara took advantage of this moment of respite to turn the tables on the Doctor. Slim hands traced the contours of his chest trying to memorize the places that made the Doctor’s breath catch in his throat which she would come back later to explore in more depth. For now, her hands had a clear goal. When her slim hands enveloped his erection, the moan that escaped him was pure lust, causing her to buck up against him. 

She explored him carefully, noting the softness of his skin as it rippled over steel-hard muscle and the way he twitched in her grip when she ran a fingernail over a bulging vein. Surprisingly, the Doctor let her stroke him, quiet except for his harsh breathing. His blue eyes were trained on her face as he strained against her arms trembling and trying not to thrust into her fist although his body was rapidly betraying him. The only thing keeping him somewhat grounded was the pain in his side, but even that was fast being drowned out by an entirely different ache in his lower abdomen. Still, he let Clara pleasure him until he knew he was reaching the point of no return. 

For her part, Clara was mesmerized by the sight of the Time Lord reduced to panting breaths and shallow thrusts as she pumped his length, occasionally sweeping her thumb over the engorged head. She could see the tension in his frame, the clench in his jaw and the taught tendons in his neck just begging for her to nibble at them. And she would have if it hadn’t been for the way his eyes focused on her, refusing to close. 

‘Clara,’ he groaned her name, hand catching her wrist and stilling her movements. ‘Need to… aah … be inside you.’

‘Yes, oh god, yes,’ she answered him enthusiastically, giving him a squeeze that had him grip the sheet so tight he feared he might rip it.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, the Doctor rose on his hands dragging Clara’s hand away from his cock, making sure he could sustain his weight on one hand before guiding himself to her wet entrance, his hand returning to its previous position next to her head. He paused, making sure Clara was looking at him and slid inside her in one smooth thrust. 

A mixture of appreciative groans and moans echoed in Clara’s bedroom as the Doctor sheathed himself deep inside Clara. They stopped and stared at each other, soaking in the sensations cursing through their bodies and marveling at how well they fit together, his bigger body completely covering her smaller one. 

‘Doctor…’ Clara gasped, ‘want you, need you… oh god… please… move.’ The man grinned smugly at her broken words and the desire he heard in her voice. His own need driving him on, he kissed her deeply, swallowing her cries as he pulled almost all the way out of her before thrusting back in, making sure to grind his pelvic bone against her clit.

The Doctor established a punishing rhythm that had them claw and grip at any expanse of skin they could find, teeth biting and marking. Clara arched her back each time the Doctor made a downward thrust, meeting him with her own counter rhythm. The friction he was creating was delicious, and she felt her nerve endings on fire from the sheer pleasure of having him move inside her. But she wanted to see the Doctor come undone from her touch, see him stare at her while she rode him. She wanted him bucking up into her as she squeezed his cock. God, to see his expression then…

Wrapping her legs high around his waist, Clara tried to reverse their positions only to find the Doctor holding her hip down with his right hand, a smirk on his face having sensed her intentions. She wasn’t even aware she had closed her eyes until she found herself staring in his face. 

He tutted. ‘Control-freak.’ His Scottish drawl much more pronounced. 

‘You… ah .. you love it,’ she managed to choke out as the Doctor hit a particularly sensitive spot inside her. 

His smirk vanished, replaced by a much tender look filled with love. ‘Yes,’ he whispered softly in her ear, ‘very much.’ Clara’s heart swelled at his words and she held him tight to her, one hand splayed between his shoulder blades, the other burying itself in his sweaty curls. ‘I love you so much, Doctor,’ she whispered back against his jaw, lips scraping his stubble. ‘So, so much.’

The Doctor pulled back enough to be able to look at Clara in the eye.

‘Clara, Clara, oh my Clara.’ They kissed languidly, in complete contrast to the way their bodies were rubbing wantonly against each other, only for them to break apart when the Doctor hit that sweet spot once more. Clara threw her head back exposing her elegant neck to the Doctor’s questing lips as pleasure shot up her spine and she felt the first flutters of her orgasm race through her, coiling tightly in her belly. He must have felt it too as he redoubled his efforts to hit that spot again and again. 

She mewled, clutching at his back while he drove hard inside her, emitting tiny gasps himself as Clara’s internal muscles rippled around his shaft. He ground his pelvis hard against Clara’s, and suddenly she froze before letting out the most beautiful of sounds as she came apart around and under him. A few more thrust, aided by her internal muscles milking him, and he was right behind her, the pressure in his lower abdomen tightening until it finally exploded and he saw white as he emptied himself inside her, crushing her trembling body to him. 

The Doctor had no idea how much time had passed when he became aware of the gentle stroking of Clara’s fingers through his hair. There was a certain fuzzy numbness spreading in his body as he came down from his high. Gradually though reality began to reassert itself as his brain slowly started to process information again. Clara. He was lying in her arms, face tucked in the space where neck met shoulder, her skin damp with sweat. Salty, that’s what she tasted like, and of him. Her purr sent tingles up and down his spine. 

‘I think you might have killed me.’ Her voice was raspy and groggy and the Doctor let out a chuckle at her words. Levering himself up on shaky arms he took in the sight splayed under him. 

Clara was beautiful, from her flushed skin and tangled hair, to her swollen lips and hooded eyes. But most of all, her serene smile made his chest constrict with a joy he hadn’t felt in a long time. And she was all his. He smiled against her lips, kissing her sloppily, not that either cared. 

She struggled with keeping her eyes open, her lids feeling heavier and heavier with each passing moment as her body buzzed with endorphins. The last thing she remembered seeing was the Doctor’s face, relaxed and with fewer lines, and that oh so rare happy and toothy grin that made his eyes crinkle. She might have mumbled an ‘I love you’ just before falling asleep, feeling sated and secure with the Doctor’s body pressing down on hers. 

The Doctor watched silently as Clara lost the battle with sleep, her body growing slack in his arms. He tenderly tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and gathered her close. 

‘Sleep well, my Clara.’

More quickly than he would have liked, the Doctor too succumbed to the tempting call of sleep, his bruises long forgotten. 

 *************************************************************************

Clara become aware of a number of things at the same time. The subdued warmth emanating from behind her back indicated that the Doctor was still in bed with her. It most certainly was his calloused hand then that was cupping her breast, same with the hairy leg tucked between hers. The man was also busy laving attention to her neck, first sucking and then lapping at the abused skin soothingly. His ministration were sending sparks to all her nerve endings and she moaned. 

‘Ahh, good you’re awake!’ An entirely too cheerful Doctor greeted her. She shut her eyes more tightly in an attempt to slip back into that blissful unconsciousness, though the Doctor’s wandering hands were making that rather difficult. 

‘Come on, Clara, rise and shine.’ 

‘Uungh, no, sleep,’ Clara muttered, burying her face in her pillow. 

‘Oh god, don’t stop,’ she amended a moment later when the Doctor expertly rolled her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. She arched under his touch, her ass pushing back against his crotch. 

‘However much I’d like to do that,’ the Doctor emphasized his words by thrusting his arousal against her ass, ‘you don’t have time.’

At that, Clara’s brain woke a bit more. ‘Time? What time is it?’ There was a rising sense of panic in her voice and a growing feeling she was forgetting something very important.

‘Almost 8.’ 

Her eyes opened wide. Reality burst her blissful post-coital bubble.

Morning.

Monday.

School. 

‘8!?’ she shrieked and jumped from the bed startling the Doctor. 

_Shit, shit, shit, shit!_

She had wanted to finish her markings by getting up early before going to school and now not only hadn’t she finished correcting the exams, there was no way on earth she would make it to Coal Hill in time. 

Wait. 

The TARDIS!

As if reading her mind, the Doctor, who was now reclining in her bed with arms behind his head, shot her down, hard. ‘She is parked in a park somewhere in London.’ The hope Clara had felt rise in her chest, was immediately dashed. He watched calmly as she ran around her half dark bedroom trying to find something to wear.

She registered absentmindedly that his bruises had mostly faded, even the one at his side, and so too had the cuts. 

She most certainly did not notice the way the sheet tented over his erection or how it slid dangerously low on his hip as he stretched. 

_Don’t go there, Oswald, or you are not leaving this apartment any time soon._

‘Just call in sick, say you caught a bad cold from one of your wee pudding brains.’ 

Oh god, she did not need this new version of the Time Lord, relaxed and aroused. He had no right to look so devastatingly good in her rumpled bed, with his chest marked by her nails and lips, and a very alluring case of bed hair. Her treacherous brain decided in that moment to remind her how good it had felt to slid her fingers through that mass of silver curls while he brought her to an earth-shattering orgasm. 

Clara felt her body thrumming with desire as the memories of their first time assaulted her senses. 

‘Clara, come back to bed,’ the Doctor enticed her. 

He was so not helping. And oh god, was he … yes, he was. She watched with great interest how his right hand travelled down his chest and abdomen to stroke himself leisurely, his eyes watching her watch him. His movement had dislodged the sheet, so now he was completely bared to her.

She was sure her brain had actually melted. 

_Bastard_

With a swift movement she grabbed her robe from where she had discarded it on the floor last night and her phone sitting on her nightstand. A slightly bewildered Doctor looked on as she shrugged the robe on and walked out of the bedroom. Curious, he followed her out into the hall and then living room where he found her pacing with her phone at her ear. 

By now having an inkling at to what his Clara was doing he slipped closer, wholly unperturbed by his nakedness, wrapping one arm around her waist and pulling her to his hard chest. Clara shot him a warning look over her shoulder but was prevented from saying anything when the person on the line answered. 

‘Yes, hello, this is Clara Oswald, I was calling to say I won’t be able to come in today, got a sudden bout of the stomach flu,’ the lie came out more smoothly than she expected, especially with the way the Doctor’s hands were sneaking under her robe. 

‘Playing hooky, how naughty of you, Miss Oswald,’ the Doctor whispered with a thick accent in her ear, biting at her earlobe and making her shiver. 

‘Yes, that’s correct,’ she found herself say into the phone, her responses automatic as she struggled not to moan too loudly while the Doctor kissed his way down her neck to the V of her robe. The rest of the conversation was a blur as Clara managed to barely keep her breathing under control at the feel of the Doctor’s hands teasing her damp folds. God, the stupid alien was too talented. 

She hadn’t even properly hung up when his mouth was hot on hers and he plucked the phone right out of her hand, depositing it unceremoniously on her couch. 

‘God, you are insufferable, you know that?’ Clara panted against his chest when they did break for air. 

‘Yeah? I didn’t hear any complaints.’ That smug smile would one die be his demise, she was sure of it. For now though, she settled for jumping him. He caught her easily of course, superior Time Lord strength and all that. Clara decided it would be a good idea to test just how strong the grey stick insect come owl was. 

She wasn’t disappointed.

Searching for the TARDIS also had to wait well into the afternoon. 

Fin


End file.
